by Kevin W. Bliss
Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC) faces allegations of breach of contract in Texas, where the private prison firm allegedly forced prisoners to sign for parole-required treatment and program time they were not in fact provided. The scam allegedly began during the COVID-19 pandemic and continued even after relaxation of social distancing protocols that might have excused the failure to provide the programming – though not lying about it, of course.
Before certain Texas prisoners can be paroled, they must complete rehabilitation programming, whether substance abuse or other treatment, according to the nature of their crimes. Lasting three to nine months, these programs are supposed to help prepare a prisoner for successful reentry.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) contracts with MTC to operate 17 state prisons and jails – agreements worth more than $100 million in total. Those contracts obligate the firm to provide the parole-required programing.
During the initial COVID-19 lockdown, MTC had to develop new methods of delivering required programming that respected social distancing protocols. MTC’s answer, according to state prisoners, was not to hold the programs at all and simply forge the documentation.
LatinoJustice filed a complaint with the state auditor ...
by Harold Hempstead
On April 8, 2022, a former supervising guard at a private prison operated for the Tennessee Department of Corrections pleaded guilty to two counts of civil rights violations for assaulting a compliant prisoner. When sentenced in May 2023, the former security threat group coordinator for CoreCivic’s Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility, Kenan Lister, 43, faces up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and $250,000 in fines.
Lister’s first count arose from an unlawful use of force in August 2019. The guard escorted prisoner “R.V.” to a holding cell, after an alleged assault on a prison employee. While the prisoner was in the cell and not resisting, Lister punched him in the head, knocking him to the ground. Lister then kicked, punched and struck the prisoner several times more in his head, chest and torso, causing him serious bodily injury, including fractured ribs and a punctured lung. The guard also then fabricated a report about the incident to cover up his crime.
The second count related to the deliberate indifference Lister showed to R.V.’s serious medical needs after the incident, when he locked the prisoner in a cell without providing medical care and without notifying ...
by Jacob Barrett
On September 26, 2022, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sitting en banc vacated a district court’s order denying a preliminary injunction to the federal government and private prison giant GEO Group, Inc. that would prevent California from enforcing a ban on all private prisons in the state.
California legislators passed Assembly Bill (AB) 32 in 2019, barring private companies from operating jails, prisons or detention centers in the state for any government – including the federal government. In December that year, GEO Group filed a challenge to the law, arguing the state violated the Supremacy Clause of the federal constitution by preventing the federal government and the firm from renewing contracts for detention centers it operates in California for the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) and federal Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE). [See: PLN, Dec. 2020, p.30.]
In October 2020, the federal court for the Southern District of California upheld AB 32 as it applied to ICE but stopped short of enforcing the law against USMS. Joined by the federal government, GEO Group appealed the decision. In October 2021 a divided three-judge panel of the Court struck down the law as applied ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
At its meeting on January 24, 2023, the Board of County Commissioners of Florida’s Citrus County voted to deduct $116,250 off its December 2022 bill from private prison operator CoreCivic to run the county jail. The fine represents a daily fee of $3,750, assessed for failing to meet staffing requirements at Citrus County Detention Facility.
County staffers previously warned that CoreCivic let staffing levels fall to 69.78% from 70.48% in November. That meant the staffing crisis would soon reach its one-year anniversary since the firm’s fines began accruing in February 2022. [See: PLN, Apr. 2022, p.34.]
The latest fine also puts CoreCivic’s losses at the jail well over $1 million in just three years – since it coughed up $425,000 in January 2019 to settle claims that its guards allowed a developmentally disabled teen to be raped by a fellow detainee. The lawsuit filed by C.W. Butzer’s mother, Lesley, also accused the firm of preventing her from contacting him after the 2016 assault. [See: PLN, Dec. 2018, p.50.]
Butzer filed her suit in federal court for the Middle District of Florida in August 2017. The case involved, as the Court later recalled, “the alleged ...
by Keith Sanders
Violence occurs inside America’s prisons every day. But those held or working inside Oklahoma’s Davis Correctional Facility (DCF) have endured an unprecedented amount of bloodletting at the lockup, which is operated by Tennessee-based private prison giant CoreCivic: Between New Years and mid-September 2022, at least 18 people were stabbed, leaving three dead, including a guard.
According to Hughes County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) data, an unnamed 29-year-old prisoner died after being stabbed in the neck on March 24, 2022. Another unnamed prisoner, who was 35, was fatally stabbed in the stomach on May 31, 2022. On July 31, 2022, guard Alan Jay Hershberger, 61, was killed with a homemade weapon by prisoner Gregory Thompson, 49. Hershberger was the first guard killed on duty at a state prison since 2000.
Bobby Cleveland, who now helms Oklahoma Corrections Professionals, the union for state prison guards, blames CoreCivic’s persistent failure to fully staff the prison. Pointing to a weekly report from the state Department of Corrections (DOC), the former GOP state legislator said the private lockup is “locked down constantly because they don’t have enough staff.”
DOC faces system-wide staffing shortages. State prisons are “regularly staffed below 50% of the ...
by Keith Sanders
On February 4, 2023, a crowd of 50 people gathered outside the Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington. They were there to support a hunger strike staged by some 100 detainees held inside by private prison giant GEO Group under contract for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). To their demands for improved conditions, GEO Group guards responded with pepper spray.
Corporate Relations Manager Christopher Ferreira said guards “were able to diffuse the initial disruption, with more than half of the detainees complying,” but he said “the remaining detainees continued to be unresponsive to staff orders,” resulting in “use of chemical agents.”
Maru Mora Villalpando, founder of La Resistencia NW, said “ICE should be held responsible for GEO’s gassing of the undocumented people detained.” The group is supporting the strike, a repeat of a smaller protest staged by nine detainees in late May 2022.
In turn, that earlier action followed a report issued by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights (CHR) on May 16, 2022, which found detainee complaints of sexual assault and abuse are routinely ignored at the lockup.
CHR uncovered systematic problems with reporting standards mandated by the Prison Rape Elimination Act ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
At its meeting on January 24, 2023, the Board of County Commissioners of Florida’s Citrus County voted to deduct $116,250 off its December 2022 bill from private prison operator CoreCivic to run the county jail. The fine represents a daily fee of $3,750, assessed for failing to meet staffing requirements at Citrus County Detention Facility.
County staffers previously warned that CoreCivic let staffing levels fall to 69.78% from 70.48% in November. That meant the staffing crisis would soon reach its one-year anniversary since the firm’s fines began accruing in February 2022. [See: PLN, Apr. 2022, p.34.]
The latest fine also puts CoreCivic’s losses at the jail well over $1 million in just three years – since it coughed up $425,000 in January 2019 to settle claims that its guards allowed a developmentally disabled teen to be raped by a fellow detainee. The lawsuit filed by C.W. Butzer’s mother, Lesley, also accused the firm of preventing her from contacting him after the 2016 assault. [See: PLN, Dec. 2018, p.50.]
Butzer filed her suit in federal court for the Middle District of Florida in August 2017. The case involved, as the Court later recalled, “the alleged ...
by Jo Ellen Nott
On April 9, 2022, family members and friends of men held at the Civil Commitment Facility (CCF) in Littlefield, Texas, protested the injustices which occur within the razor-wire fences of the former prison. Decrying the state’s “failed sex offender treatment program,” the protestors called the operation a “shadow prison,” where their loved ones are held against their will despite completing their criminal sentences.
In Texas, the Civil Commitment Office (TCCO) uses state courts to order sexual offenders who have served their sentences to participate in treatment programs designed to prevent relapse. The program, created in 1999 and reformed in 2015 by Gov. Greg Abbott (R), relies on private contractors to run the treatment centers. But as noted by KLBK in Lubbock, the “treatment program is not clearly defined by legislators, and it leaves room for interpretation.”
Protestors and advocates challenge the so-called “pre-crime preventative detention” laws that authorize the program. They demand an end to what has become indefinite imprisonment. During the April protest at CCF, Kevin Word of Texans Against Civil Commitment told KLBK that the group wants people “released [from treatment] after they’ve served their time.”
“Murderers are being let out,” Word pointed out. ...
by Ashleigh N. Dye
For the 2018 deaths of two detainees at Pennsylvania’s Bucks County Correctional Facility (BCCF), the county has agreed to pay a total of $959,000. Its privately contracted jail healthcare provider, PrimeCare Medical, reportedly agreed to pay another $750,000 in one case, plus an undisclosed amount to settle the other.
The first case involved the death from opiate withdrawal of detainee Frederick Adami, 52, on January 28, 2018. Booked into BCCF the day before for failure to pay child support, the father of five told a PrimeCare nurse at booking that he used 20 bags of heroin daily, taking the last the day before his arrest.
Though he complained of vomiting and chills, and the nurse noted his elevated blood pressure as well as difficulty walking, she was apparently willing to disbelieve what her own eyes should have told her — that withdrawal was likely to blame for his poor appearance, which she described as “inappropriate.” Why? According to the suit later filed on his behalf, the nurse noted that no withdrawal symptoms were “witnessed by any [guards] while in reception.”
So it was three hours later before any medication was ordered to treat Adami’s withdrawal. It ...
by Benjamin Tschirhart
No one in prison expects to eat fine cuisine. The food served is merely intended to keep prisoners alive, with no thought given to how much it is or isn’t enjoyed. Yet certain people are seeing enormous benefits from prison food — just not prisoners.
In a report published in CovertAction Magazine on December 6, 2022, investigative reporter Lauren Smith sheds light on an old conundrum: Why is prison food so awful? As it turns out, we can blame something called the “secondary food market.” That’s where perishable food goes after its expiration date passes. According to Smith, this shadowy place is where “expired food gets reprocessed, repackaged, relabeled, and resold” by “food liquidators” to institutional bulk buyers — schools, hospitals, even prisons.
There are “scant regulations” in this market, Smith says, and “purchasing specifications” for institutional buyers are “silent” in regard to it. As a result, these liquidators and their bargain prices win institutional food service contracts “nearly every time.” However, she warns, “in the secondary food market, you get what you pay for” because “the saying ‘garbage in, garbage out’ has [never] been more appropriate.”
Citing a recent estimate by the federal Centers for Disease ...
